The invention is in the field of treating a substance such as a gas with an energizer such as RF energy to change its state and specifically pertains to the use of RF energy to transition a gas under controlled conditions to a new state.
It is known that gas can be treated with energy such as RF energy to heat or ionize the gas, and effects such as glow discharge and transitioning to plasma states are known. While a special form of lightning called ball lightning appears to have some of the characteristics of gas plasma it also has other characteristics that appear to be different from those of the known gas plasmas and appear to contradict some accepted principles of physics. For example, it is reported that a naturally occurring ball in the form of a glowing fireball has been observed to last for many seconds, to persist in a shielded environment and to have other unusual properties. See, e.g.: Johnson, P. O., "Ball Lightning and Self Containing Electromagnetic Fields," Am. J. Phys. 33, 119 (1965); Singer, S., "The Nature of Ball Lightning," Plenum Press, New York (1971); King, M. B., "Tapping the Zero-Point Energy," 1989, pp. 7-10 (Paraclette Publishing, P. O. Box 859, Provo, UT 84603); and Secor, H. W., "The Tesla High Frequency Oscillator," Electrical Experimenter 3, 615 (1916). Some publications discuss energy relationships that may be relevant to some ball lightning characteristics. See, e.g.: Puthoff, H. E., "Gravity as a Zero-Point Fluctuation Force," Phys. Rev. A39(5), 2333 (1989); Hirichi, R. et al., "Three-Dimensional Self-Organization of a Magnetohydrodynamic Plasma," Phys. Rev. Lett. 55 (2), 211-213 (1985); King, M. B., "Macroscopic Vacuum Polarization," Proceedings of the Tesla Centennial Symposium, International Tesla Society, Colorado Springs, pp. 99-107 (1984); Boyer, T. H., "Random Electrodynamics: The Theory of Classical Electrodynamics with Classical Electromagnetic Zero-point Radiation," Phys. Rev. D11, No. 4. 790 (1975); and Senitzky, I. R., "Radiation-Reaction and Vacuum Field Effects in Heisenberg-Picture Quantum Electrodynamics," Phys. Rev. Lett. 31 (15) 955 (1973).
While there has been a significant interest in ball lightning, it is believed that significant aspects of the nature and characteristics of the phenomenon have remained largely unexplained by accepted principles of physics and that no effective way had been found to reliably reproduce at least some of the unique effects of the phenomenon. The invention is directed to this perceived need to reproduce some of these effects and exploit them.
In an exemplary and non-limiting embodiment of the invention, at least some of the effects of the ball lightning phenomenon are created by generating a glow discharge at the free end of a waveguide in a vacuum vessel containing a gas at an initial pressure below atmospheric by feeding RF energy at a frequency above about 1 MHz to said waveguide, then gradually increasing the gas pressure while continuing to feed the same RF energy to the waveguide until the glow discharge transitions to a new state in which the average internal temperature of the gas at the free end of the waveguide is at least an order of magnitude higher than that of the glow discharge, and maintaining that new state of the gas for a period of the order of at least tens of seconds. The initial gas pressure can be of the order of 10.sup.-1 mbar; it is increased gradually to the range of about 20-100 mbar and preferably 20-40 mbar. The RF energy can be at about 27.12 MHz.
It is believed that the process involves causing the gas first to transition to a glow discharge state in which the electron-free positive ions of the gas are above the boundary R.sub.k,p =(2)(10.sup.-16)/E, where R.sub.k,p is the spacial distance in cm between adjacent electron-free positive ions in the gas which is in the glow discharge state and E is the energy in Erg of an electron-free positive ion, and then causing the gas to transition to a new state in which a sufficient number of the electron-free positive ions are below the boundary R.sub.k,p to substantially increase the average internal temperature of the gas, and then maintaining that new state for a period of the order of at least tens of seconds. While this is the explanation of the phenomenon in which the inventor believes, it may turn out that a different theory of operation is more accurate or is the only accurate theory. However, the invention disclosed and claimed herein is not limited to or by any particular theory of operation but is defined only by the scope of the appended claims.